Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

Agreed, as a developer there have been times in the past where I've pushed something to testing which - although it passed community QA - I didn't quite feel was ready to go to stable.

There should be a very clear and public discussion with the whole community about a change to having unmaintained packages in the stable repo. There may not be much practical difference, but you don't know how many N900 users use the repo (which is enabled by default, remember) but aren't following TMO or the Testing Squad list.

The council could ultimately make the decision (but not the testing squad list), but I'd like to see the rationale and discussion in public anyway so that there can be buy-in to the council's decision.

Maybe (and this is OTTOMH) the promotion requirements for an orphaned package should be much higher so that, effectively, the whole community is taking on responsibility for supporting this package (i.e. ensuring it doesn't have any critical issues; or we have a way of carrying comments through from testing to Downloads)

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

As the developer of the apps.formeego.org client software, I like the idea of having a version for Fremantle. So if apps.formeego.org is going to have a Fremantle target, I will port the client.

Currently I'm curious to see whether built-in QA in the client helps with the lack of testers. QA will be made more prominent in the client if you have enabled the staging repository.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

It's being announced over the Mer general mailing list. I've forwarded to the maemo developer mailing list. Please pardon the cut and paste here.

"From: martin brook <martin.brook100@googlemail.com>
Date: Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 1:34 PM
Subject: [mer-general] Fwd: Replacement for MeeGo Community OBS
To: mer-general@lists.merproject.org

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your time at the meeting and you can find Minutes and the full log below.

[17:14] <@MerBot> Meeting ended Tue Mar 20 17:14:38 2012 UTC. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.merproject.org/wiki/Meetings . (v 0.1.4)
[17:14] <@MerBot> Minutes: http://mer.bfst.de/meetings/mer-meet...-20-16.00.html
[17:14] <@MerBot> Minutes (text): http://mer.bfst.de/meetings/mer-meet...3-20-16.00.txt
[17:14] <@MerBot> Log: http://mer.bfst.de/meetings/mer-meet...16.00.log.html

I was thinking of scheduling another get together on 10 April at 16:00 UTC , I'll send out an email nearer the time and if anyone wants to sponsor/donate please get in touch.

BR

vgrade"

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

That's because the app was never finished, and was never in a functional state. (I know, I still have it installed...)

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

+1

ten chars

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

I don't know why you insist is saying that the discussion has not been done in the open, you can see the thread in TMO with Council involved and then the continuation in the mailing list with Council approval.

It's the same situation for all those packages already in Extras that doesn't have a maintainer any more.

The real situation right now is that almost everyone use Devel as the only working repository, not only users installing whatever crap appears over there, but also developers that don't care any more with the broken QA system.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

Thanks. For the record, here's the original email.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

I originally was half-in the auto-promote camp, but you make a valid argument against it. Perhaps what we really need in a way for super-testers to be able (after community discussion) to push a package from testing to extras after it's been unpromoted by it'd developer for a set time. That would solve both issues: Highly used and stable items can be promoted without the worry that something will be auto-promoted that wasn't ready.

I think the real issue here is that we have several packages that are never leaving testing which are by far ready, but simply don't have an active maintainer.

As a side issue... Maybe giving Council a tool/account that can change an abandoned packages ownership would be a better fix. That would mean to promote a package testers would need to pester Council (so it won't happen without lots of scrutiny), but it's something that can be done without needed to take up the limited resources we have when it comes to maintainer efforts. It would also allow changes in ownership to vital projects when maintainers randomly vanish. which has happened a few times in the past year or so.

Thoughts?

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

That is great news. Thank you.

You might want to read the preliminary discussion in the IRC meeting if you can. It was implied that the community OBS would be moved to a different entity (still undefined). I am still unclear what else is implied by such a move.

Re: Community projects having problems with infrastucture
 

Does that "almost everyone" come from the set of active posters on t.m.o, or from the larger set of N900 owners, an unknown number of which have never heard of maemo.org?

Users already here have an avenue for support when a broken package winds up in Extras. Those not aware of this community will be at the mercy of local shops that likely don't even remember the N900 and Nokia Care, who probably can offer no suggestion other than a reflash.

I'd prefer an approach that attempts to minimize potential harm.